15 | April | 2012 | E-verything!

But It’s Mine!

Suppose you took a fantastic photo with your digital camera, and you put it up on the web. You would be very proud of it, and you would be right to be proud of it.

Now, suppose some thief came along, stole it, and made lots of money from it? You wouldn’t be very happy, would you?

(Image courtesy Purdue University)

No, I didn’t think you would be.

So When Is It Okay to Copy Stuff?

You can copy things when the owner says you can. They might tell you that you need to say where you got it from, and how you can use it. Look at that picture just above. The owner (Purdue University) is very happy for me to put in this blog, because they said I could provided that I said where it came from “(Image courtesy Purdue University)” and I wasn’t going to sell it.

CREATIVE COMMONS

Creative Commons is a way that people are happy to share their stuff with you provided that follow the Creative Commons rules that apply. You quite often see an image that looks like this:

A Creative Commons Licence

This is almost the same license as the one for the thief image.

Always be sure to read the Creative Common license for any pictures or words that you want to use yourself. If you are unsure, ask someone!

Where Can I Get Pictures?

You may have heard of Flickr. It has lots of pictures that you can use under a Creative Commons license. When I entered this:

Creative Commons horse request on Flickr

I found this:

Lady, you’ve got a weird eye!?

The photographer (Jinterwas) has asked that she is acknowledged as the photographer, so here is a link to her web pages on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jinterwas/.

If you click here, you will see where Jinterwas put the original photo, and you will also see a link to the license:

License link

If you click on that “License” link, it will tell exactly what you are allowed to do with her photo.

You can get to the Flickr web site by clicking on this link.

For More Information

For an excellent post by Ronnie Burt on what you can and cannot use, have a look at this link.

Phil Hart (https://philhart.edublogs.org/)

Introduction

This was one of those occasional sessions where I am writing the overview post from the recording of this Serendipity session. I was laid low by a migraine! So Phil went “solo” doing a fantastic job as Moderator/Facilitator. On hearing the recording I was so sad to have missed this exciting session about something very close to my heart. The chosen topic in full was “Would teachers value professionals from the real world of work in the classroom to reinforce applied learning?”

The Session

This was a great session although for me as always when I listen to a recording rather than attend a virtual session of any sort it was somewhat frustrating! I kept wanting to type in text and on the whiteboard and trying to put up my virtual hand :).

The session started with a whiteboard of some initial thoughts. These included: clarification of the meaning of “applied learning” in this context; and some examples.

The first whiteboard generated discussion that led to a second whiteboard about visiting experts – their presence or non-presence and their roles.

Again much more discussion took place with consideration of attracting learners into skill shortage areas, and reference to teaching for jobs that currently don’t exist through transferrable skills. This is a part where I so wanted to join in as I have a “bee in my bonnet” about transferrable skills and the need to teach generic rather than specific tool use, and of course critical thinking. Although I have a caveat on this because in my professional judgement not all students can learn critical thinking – we can’t all learn everything there are some things for each of us that we lack the capacity to learn! For me one of these is anything music related!

Conclusion

I really wish I had been there – I always hate to miss a session and in this one there were so many times when I wanted to join in! As a literacy/numeracy lecturer in Public Vocational Education (Australian TAFE) I am is a system that is based on experts from the real world of the industry or profession doing the teaching. However I often feel that the whole system focuses too much on industry expertise & not enough on the skills to facilitate learning. For me the use of team teaching and/or inclusion of guests still working in the industry is a great potential solution.

Our Next Session

Our next Webinar is an Edublogs “Fine Focus” session. “A Moderator Sandpit” In which we will discuss and “play with” BlackboardCollaborate from the Moderator perspective. Join us on Thursday April 19^th at 23:00 GMT/UTC the time for you will vary depending on your timezone (check yours here) Thursday afternoon/evening in the USA, late night Thursday in Europe, and Friday morning April 20^th in Australia – in the usual Blackboard Collaborate virtual room.